


Equinox

by Acidqueen



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-25
Updated: 2017-04-25
Packaged: 2018-10-23 23:39:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10729683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acidqueen/pseuds/Acidqueen
Summary: Maddy and Kaidan's oldest kids get into some trouble that puts one of them in the hospital. Kaidan has to talk to a hostile dad.





	Equinox

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the "Die Hard The Hunter" universe

The mid-afternoon silence was broken by a loud splash, followed by a stream of curses, more splashing, and lots of yelling. Before Shepard or Kaidan could get up from the living room couch, a wiry, shirtless and muddy olive-skinned boy came crashing into the house carrying a smaller muddy bundle. He ran up the stairs and into the bathroom, and within seconds the sound of running water echoed down the stairs along with rushed speech.

A thunder of tiny feet down the stares heralded the arrival of their daughter, Hannah. Her wavy ginger hair was pulled into braided pigtails that stuck out from the top of her head like a turian’s fringe, and she was dancing excitedly in place, her pink sundress soiled with two muddy handprints on the shoulders. “Mommy!” the toddler called out, eyes wide. “Mika wants know where the meager is!”

 

“The meager?” Shepard raised an eyebrow and started to get up from the couch as Hannah continued babbling about “meager” and Michael, her eldest brother. Shepard looked up to see Hannah’s twin brother Steven peeking over the bannister, a pair of wide blue eyes peering out from under a mop of curly black hair.

“Alan’s hurt, Mommy,” he said quietly. Unlike Hannah, who was a babbling tornado of activity, Steven was quite content to quietly observe, occasionally distilling everything his sister said into a brief few words.

Kaidan got up from the couch and took Hannah by the hand. “Come on Hannah-boo, let’s go get you out of that dirty dress.” Hannah protested briefly, but eventually allowed her father to pick her up and carry her upstairs, Steven following behind. Shepard had bounded up the stairs two at a time, and ran into the upstairs bathroom.

The scene was a mess. Mud and some blood were spattered on the walls of the bathroom, and Michael was sitting on the edge of the tub smearing medi-gel into Alan’s arm. The sprayer attachment for the shower lay in the tub, and Michael was caked with red mud. A six-inch shard of metal was sticking out of the younger boy’s upper arm, and Michael was carefully daubing around it with the tube of gel. “We have to get him to the hospital, Mom.” Michael looked up at Shepard. “I’m so sorry, I told him not to do it, but he wouldn’t listen.” Michael’s voice was calm, a lot like Kaidan’s when he was holding back the urge to unleash an angry biotic blast on somebody.

“Get your brother to the car, now.” Shepard ducked out of the bathroom and into the master bedroom. “Kaidan, I’m taking Alan to the emergency room. I’ll call you when I get there.” Her tone was one that Kaidan recognized–action now, explanations later. He nodded and blew a kiss in her direction, Hannah following suit. Shepard ran down stairs and got into the family car, taking off up Skylane 12 to the nearby hospital. “What happened?” she asked.

“Junior Horton challenged Al to jump into that mudpit across the street.” Michael was carefully holding Alan close, being careful to avoid his injured arm. He brushed a stray lock of ginger hair from his brother’s face and gave him a muddy kiss on the forehead. “Is the pain going down any?” he asked. Alan responded with a shake of his head. “Fuck. I’m sorry, Al.”

Shepard looked in the rear-view mirror–Alan was wet and shivering. Shepard reached into the glove compartment and passed an emergency medkit into the back seat. “Get out the emergency blanket and put it over your brother,” she said. “He looks like he’s going into shock. Once the doctors have him, I want you to tell me everything that happened.”

“Aye ma'am.” Michael gingerly draped the silvery blanket over Alan. “You’re going to be OK,” the older boy whispered to his brother. “And I’m going to kick Junior’s…”

“You’re not going to do anything to Junior Horton.” Shepard looked in the rear-view mirror with the the “don’t-mess-with-me” look. “Your father and I will have a chat with his parents.” She pulled up in front of the ER entrance and opened the passenger door of the aircar. “Get him inside. I’ll go park.” Michael picked Alan up and carried him into the ER, drying mud falling from his body. Shepard pulled the aircar into an available parking spot and punched in the frequency for Kaidan’s omni-tool as she got out of the car, and after a few seconds her husband’s face came up on the holoscreen–he was downstairs again, with the twins and the cats clustered around him while “The Adventures of Urdnot Grunt” played in the background. “We got to the hospital in one piece,” she said. “Apparently Alan took a dare from the neighbourhood troublemaker. I’m going to get the full story from Michael when I get inside.”

“OK,” Kaidan said. “We’ll talk when you get ho–Hannah-boo, don’t headbutt Mordin.” He looked back to the holoscreen. “It looks like one of us will have to have a word with the Hortons. But we’ll discuss that later. Right now I’d better go stop our daughter from doing her best impression of her Uncle Grunt.” They said their goodbyes and disconnected, and Shepard walked into the ER.

Michael was sitting in one of the chairs in the waiting room, looking down at the floor with his head in his hands. The mud had dried on Michael’s skin and in his hair, making the boy look like he just came from an open-air Expel 10 concert. “They have him in surgery right now,” he said quietly. Shepard sat down and put an arm around her son’s shoulders. “The doc said I did a good job stabilizing him.” Michael looked up at his mother. “Mom, I should have stopped him. This is my fault.”

“Alan’s the one who jumped into that mud-hole, not you. Now, tell me what happened.”

“We were walking back from the beach, when Junior Horton comes along and starts hassling Al–called him chickenshit, said he didn’t have the balls to jump in that mud-hole on the Hamilton lot. Told him if he was _really_ a Shepard, he’d dive in.” Michael sighed. “It was so stupid, Mom. I told Al not to do it, that he’d get hurt, but he…” His head sank down again.

“You did all that you could, Mike.” Shepard hugged her son. “You did the right thing when you told Alan not to jump, but in the end it was his decision.” The house that had occupied that lot was destroyed in a fire a year previously, and the basement had never been filled in. A fence had been erected to keep trespassers out, but vandals and scavengers had broken into the site so many times that the fence may as well have been an elaborate holosculpture. Recent rainstorms turned what used to be the basement into a giant mud-hole full of debris.

“Look at me,” Shepard said. Michael looked up with tears in his eyes. “When it was just talk, I was okay with letting you deal with Junior Horton. But now he’s goaded your brother into doing something that got him seriously injured, so your father and I are going to get involved.” She wiped away a tear that had started rolling down her son’s cheek, leaving behind a smear of mud. “I don’t want you doing anything to or with that boy, am I understood?”

“Aye aye ma'am.”

“Good.” Shepard stood as a doctor in scrubs came over to where she was sitting.

“Mrs….” The doctor looked down at the datapad in his hands, and his eyes went wide for a moment. “Shepard-Alenko?” Shepard nodded. “I’m Dr. Apolinario.”

“How’s Alan doing?” Shepard asked.

“He’ll be okay, but need to admit him overnight. Your son here,” he nodded in Michael’s direction, “did a very good job stabilizing him with some military-grade medi-gel. We had to extract a small hunk of metal from his brother’s arm, and we’ve closed the gash it made in his brachial artery.”

“What?!” Michael’s face darkened, and a faint blue shimmer enveloped his body. “I’ll…”

“Stand down sailor,” Shepard said sternly, turning to fix her eldest child with a commanding glare. The shimmer faded, and Michael sat back in the chair with a look of barely-contained rage on his face. Shepard turned back to the doctor. “How bad was it?”

“The medi-gel stanched major bleeding and had started to repair damage to Alan’s right bicep, but this was definitely something that required surgical attention.” Dr. Apolinario looked over Shepard’s shoulder to Michael. “You saved your brother’s life,” he said. Michael sighed deeply and acknowledged the doctor with a nod.

“OK, can we see him?” Shepard sighed and ran a hand through her auburn hair.

“Yes, right this way. He’s a little groggy though–we had to sedate him for surgery.”

 

When they got home, Shepard sent Michael upstairs to clean the bathroom up and take a shower, then disappeared into the kitchen with Kaidan and the twins. When they came out, Shepard sat down on the couch next to Michael as Kaidan walked out the front door.

“Dad going to…” Michael asked quietly.

“Yes.”

Hannah clambered onto the couch and wedged herself in between her mother and brother. “Mommy,” she said, twisting to wrap her chubby little arms around Shepard’s waist and then Michael’s. “Where Alan?”

“Alan has to spend the night at the hospital, Hannah-boo. Daddy’s going to bring him home in the morning.” She turned on the vidscreen. “Now, let’s see what Mommy’s old pal Grunt’s gotten up to this week.”

Kaidan walked up the walkway to the house and knocked on the door. He wished that Shepard was here with him, but he and Shepard both knew it was better that he be the one to talk to the Hortons. The door opened, and a large man looked down at Kaidan. His sandy hair was cut in a Marine-style high-and-tight, and he had a bottle of beer in one hamlike fist. “Evening Mr. Horton, I’m–”

“Yeah, I know who you are.” Junior’s father took a swig from his beer, his muscled and heavily tattooed arms flexing under a black shirt from a biker bar in Manteo. “The hell do you want,” he drawled disdainfully, “Yankee?”

Kaidan took a deep breath. “I think we need to have a talk about our sons.” His voice was calm, but he knew that this could be trouble if he didn’t handle it just right. He looked up at Mr. Horton and stood at parade rest. “Did Nathan tell you what happened between him and my two older sons this afternoon?”

“No,” Mr. Horton said in a thick Low Country drawl, “He did not.”

“My second son, Alan–he’s in the hospital. According to my eldest, Nathan had goaded him into taking a flying leap into what used to be the Hamiltons’ basement. Now, Alan is the one that wound up taking the leap, that’s true. But Nathan’s been harrassing him for the last year and a half. I was content to let the boys handle it between themselves, but now? Well, one of my sons almost died, another one of my sons wants to hurt your son–”

Nathan Senior’s face darkened. “Your little bastard better keep his hands off my–”

Kaidan quickly put up a hand. “My wife and I have already made clear that we won’t tolerate Michael or Alan–once he’s out of the hospital–doing anything to Nathan. I’m just here to talk to you, father to father, because I’d like your help keeping things from escalating–In other words, I don’t want anyone else getting hurt.”

Nathan Senior took a step forward. “You threatenin’ my family, Alenko?” he growled, breath thick with the smell of cheap beer and even cheaper cigarettes.

Kaidan didn’t budge. “Not at all,” he said calmly. “I know you love your son, and you want to protect him. I feel the same way about my kids. I just think it’s time that the both of us talked to our sons and made clear that their foolishness needs to stop.”

Nathan Senior snorted. “Fuck that,” he said. “I don’t need no damn Yankee comin’ up here and tellin’ me how to raise my goddamn kid.” He looked Kaidan up and down. “You think yer all hot shit because you and that wife of yours ran off and saved a bunch of scaly-ass aliens, but you ain’t shit Alenko.” His expression darkened, and he flexed his arms menacingly.

“I’m never claimed to be anything but a dad trying to talk to another dad.” Kaidan countered. “Being a dad’s the hardest job in the galaxy,” he said. “Facing down Reapers is a cakewalk in comparison, trust me. I’m not telling you how to raise your son, Mr. Horton. I’m just trying to keep my boys from getting hurt again while they’re under my roof.”

“Is he gonna be okay?” The question made both men look into the house. Junior Horton stood on the porch behind his father and nervously bit his lip.

“Get your ass back in that house, boy!” Nathan Senior roared, pointing into the house.

“Dad,” Junior shot back to his father. “No. I was talkin’ some trash to the Alenko boys, and made a dare that Alan took. I didn’t think he’d get hurt, though…”

“Alan will be okay, Nathan.” Kaidan said. “He’s at the hospital, but he’ll be home in the morning.”

Junior walked farther out onto the porch. He looked up at his father, whose arm was half-cocked like he was ready to throw a punch. “I started all this mess, Daddy. I gotta finish it.” He sighed. “Like you taught me.”

Nathan Senior snorted again, growled, and stormed back into the house. “Fine,” he snarled. “Do what you gotta do, then getcher ass back in the house.”

Junior put his hands in his pockets and hung his head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Alenko. Honest, I didn’t think there was anything but mud in that basement. I thought he’d just get dirty–when I saw the blood and saw Mike go in after him, I just hauled ass home.” the boy’s breath hitched, and he looked back up at Kaidan with tears in his eyes. “I swear, I–”

“Nathan, it’s OK. The person you need to apologize to is Alan. He’ll be home from the hospital tomorrow, and you’re welcome to come over and talk to him.” Kaidan stuck out his hand. “Deal?”

Junior grasped Kaidan’s hand in a firm handshake. “Deal. How bad was it?”

“I’ll let Alan tell you.”

“Okay.” Junior looked back over his shoulder for a moment, then back to Kaidan. “And don’t worry about my dad,” he half-whispered. “My momma got taken by the Reapers in the War, when I was just a baby and Daddy was off fightin’ ‘em in Raleigh Metro. Daddy misses her pretty bad, and seeing you and Mrs. Alenko makes him sore because it reminds him of Momma.” He looked back over his shoulder again.

“I’m sorry, Nathan.” Kaidan sighed. “It’s not easy to lose somebody you love.”

“Yeah. I better go back in the house.” the boy turned and went toward the door, then stopped and looked back over his shoulder. “Is it okay if I come over in the afternoon?” he asked.

“Sure thing.” Kaidan smiled. “Go take care of your dad, Nathan.”

“Have a good night, Mr. Alenko.” Junior shut the door, leaving Kaidan standing on the porch as the sun started to set behind him. He sighed deeply, then turned and walked down the porch steps.


End file.
